Our Approach

FPESA searches recent peer-reviewed scientific literature for articles published in 2005 or later that include in their texts key words related to both environmental and family planning fields. To identify candidate papers for our assessment we use Google Scholar, Knowledge Base, Scopus, general reading, citations in previously identified papers, and interviews and with experts. In 2014, through a partnership with Population Media Center, we also used the Meltwater Group’s online media monitoring service to search recent scientific literature.

Recognizing the improbability of identifying individual articles that specifically examine potential benefits of family planning to environmental sustainability, assessors consider the evidence for individual connections comprising the correlations and causative pathways hypothesized in our conceptual framework. Those articles that appear to offer evidence for (or against) these conceptual components in the FPESA staff’s view become candidates for assessment by our network of collaborating assessors..